Robert Walker: The Implications of Jesus' Resurrection

Robert T. Walker is nephew of the late Thomas F. Torrance. Walker edited Torrance's lecture notes into two books describing Torrance's teachings about the person and work of Jesus Christ. The first is Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (InterVarsity, 2008); the second is Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (InterVarsity, 2009).

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Introduction:You’re Included traveled to
Scotland’s esteemed University of St. Andrews for a special Thomas F. Torrance
conference marking the launch of the book Atonement:
The Person and Work of Christ. Atonement
is the second of two volumes consisting of Torrance’s lectures on Christology
at New College in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1952 to 1978. Edited by retired
theology lecturer and outdoor sports instructor Robert T. Walker, the two books
have been called clear, accessible, deeply rooted in Scripture, and the most
comprehensive presentation of Torrance’s understanding of the incarnation and
the atonement ever published. As a nephew of the late Thomas F. Torrance,
Walker gained an intimate understanding of Torrance’s theology, studying under
him and hearing his lectures in person.

In
the 500-year-old Senior Common room of St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews’
renowned divinity school, You’re Included
host J. Michael Feazell, Vice-President of Grace Communion International,
interviews Robert T. Walker.

J. Michael Feazell:
As you were working on the project of Incarnation
and Atonement, what were some of the
memorable moments during the process?

Robert Walker:
It’s hard to answer that, because I’m not sure there’s any one particular
moment. But working on the whole thing, it was deeply moving and I felt this is
precious, this is wonderful stuff. I heard all the lectures, but coming back to
it, it just swept over me all over again. All sorts of things I appreciated
struck me with much greater force, all sorts of things. It’s been a wonderful
experience and very rewarding.

JMF:
Do you remember a couple of those that stand out?

RW:
For example, this emphasis on the resurrection and the meaning of the
resurrection. Normally we think the gospel is the cross, and then the
resurrection is kind of an extra.

JMF:
Yeah.

RW:
But in many ways, it’s the resurrection…you can’t separate the two. There’s a
verse of Paul, “Jesus was put to death for our sins and raised for our
justification.” Raised for our justification. In other words, it’s the
resurrection that makes us righteous. The cross perhaps puts away our sins, but
it’s the resurrection that makes us righteous.

The
resurrection is an almighty event. It’s not just the raising of a body from
death, it’s the beginning of a new creation — the beginning of the renewal of
all of space and time. For Torrance, it brings out the fact that the
resurrection is forgiveness. It’s not just the proof of forgiveness, it is forgiveness, because in the Bible,
sin and death are linked. So for God to undo sin, means to undo death. So the
resurrection, that means, is God’s undoing sin. It’s raising somebody up who
has taken our sin out of the grave, so that is our resurrection.

That’s
why Paul says, “If Christ is not raised, we are still in our sins.” Something
like that, which we often bypass, it just hit me with renewed force…and there
are all sorts of nuggets like that in the book.

JMF:
It turns everything on its head, doesn’t it? Instead of hoping our sins are
forgiven if we repent well enough, it gives us full assurance of salvation
because Christ has already done everything. What a joy, what rest, what peace.

JMF:
You mentioned the resurrection as the new creation, as the starting place for
everything — implications for the entire universe, for the whole creation.
Could you elaborate on that?

RW:
Yes. The incarnation means that God has taken part of the stuff of the old
creation — our body — and in it has died and undone sin, so that when he rose,
that was the beginning of the new creation. The early fathers had an analogy
and said that when a baby is born, the head comes out first, and that’s the
hard part. But once the head’s come out, the rest of the body will follow. They
used that of Christ — that he’s the head, he’s the firstborn, the first fruits,
and he’s the head that’s come out first, so the whole of the rest of creation
will follow in what’s happened to Christ.

That
means…literally the renewal of all space and time. The whole physical creation
will be renewed in Christ and reconstituted under him as the new head. That’s
the unbelievably cosmic dimension of the New Testament, and that comes out
extremely well in Torrance’s writings. He has a very good understanding of that
— that the resurrection is not just somebody being raised from the dead, it’s
the beginning of the whole new reconstitution of everything —it’s the beginning
of heaven on earth.

JMF:
That would imply that we don’t know what space and time will look like, will be
like in the resurrection, once we are immortal. What will that look like — as
something not like what we experience now, perhaps?

RW:
Obviously, we can’t say. But we can say that it will be this creation, these
bodies of ours, we’ll recognize each other, so there will be continuity. And
yet what it will be like when the creation is freed from sin and death and
corruption and injustice, we can’t say. It will be far more wonderful and
glorious — we can only look forward to it. The Bible says that it does not yet
appear — we cannot yet see what we shall be like, but we know that when he
comes, Christ comes again, we’ll be like him [1 John 3:2]. It speaks of Jesus
now having a new and more glorious body, a body which no longer dies.

JMF:
After his resurrection he appeared to the disciples several times, including on
the seashore, cooking a meal and eating it with them.And yet this was a resurrected body that he was appearing in and
he was able to enjoy food and fellowship just fine.

RW:
Yes. I like those stories, because dead men don’t rise from the dead, so it’s
quite striking that the first reaction of the disciples is…they don’t believe
it. The risen Jesus meets some of the women and the women tell the disciples
he’s risen, and they don’t believe it and they’re afraid because …is this a
ghost? No, it’s real.

The
fact that Jesus is raised, he’s the beginning of a new creation. In the 40 days
that he was on earth, the new creation was overlapping with the old creation. When
he ascended, we can no longer see the new creation that is there in Christ. We
know it by faith, we know it because we meet and know Christ through the
Spirit. We know the reality of it, and that’s what gives the New Testament its
tremendous sense of victory and of triumph and of looking forward to what we
will be. It’s not just pie in the sky, it’s the renewal of this whole wonderful
creation.

JMF:
We’re saved by grace through faith, and the Scriptures tell us even that is not
our own. Luther goes to great lengths to explain that we must not look at faith
as another work, because we’re not saved by our works, so faith cannot be a
work. How do the eyes of faith work? What is faith, and how are we to see this
new creation and believe and trust Christ that we’re in it? Where does this
faith come from and how is it not a work?

RW:
It’s something that happens in us which is God’s work, but it’s something that
really happens in us. We come to see and understand and believe, but the very
nature of that is that we know that it’s through God’s work that we came to
understand, because this is not something that we could believe for ourselves
so that we really do believe and understand.

Torrance
uses the analogy of the virgin birth. Mary did nothing to conceive Jesus.
Joseph was set aside. There was no human input, Christ was born, a man.
Something happened in Mary and she gave birth. All she did — she was told it
would happen, and she said, “Amen.” Faith is a bit like that — that God has
become man for us — to believe, to do everything for us — and we say amen to
it. Our amen is the way it happens in us. We’ve understood that it’s for us and
we say amen. We live out of what Christ has done for us. There’s something real
that happens in us. It’s a real understanding, in that it’s God’s work.

JMF:
So our job is to believe what is so. He is, therefore we don’t have to be
afraid.

RW:
Yes. To believe the gospel, to rejoice in what Christ has done for us — not
just as God but as man.

JMF:
Your degrees are in philosophy and theology. How does Trinitarian theology bear
on philosophy?

RW:
I did a full degree in philosophy and I found that very useful. It does give a
conceptual understanding, which isn’t necessary but it does help to understand
theology. I enjoyed my study in philosophy hugely. When I did theology, it was
going somewhere. There was a purpose, there was a truth, there was a reality.
And the heart of the reality in the Christian faith is the Trinity, God in
Christ. That gives us a grasp of reality as it is, so that having that grasp at
once deepens and enriches our understanding of the whole of the rest of the
world — of science, of philosophy, et cetera. The philosophy helps to
understand it.

At
the same time, the theology enriches philosophy. The Trinitarian theology, it
gives a deeper dimension. Theology helps us to think in a profound way because
in the gospel we know God. In theology we are knowing God not just with our
feelings, our hearts, but with our minds. Our minds are inevitably deepened and
stretched. So for me there’s a link between that and the fact that, I think
it’s true to say, most of the really good philosophers today are Christians,
which is a remarkable fact.

JMF:
Academic work and working on a major project like this and so on is not all you
do, you’re actually involved in outdoor sports. Can you tell us about that?

RW:
I am very fortunate. Edinburgh University has an outdoor center on Loch Tay,
that’s a lake in the Highlands — fabulously beautiful setting. I’ve worked
there almost every weekend of the year except for July and August, and four or
five months a year to mid-weeks as well. I teach kayaking, canoeing, mountain
biking, cross-country skiing, hill walking, sometimes sailing and windsurfing. I
love that. It’s out in the open air, it’s exercise, it’s doing what I love and
sharing with people. It’s an ideal balance to the academic work, to theology.

JMF:
We have just a little bit of time remaining, and in that time I wonder if you
would mind sharing some of your personal observations, reflections on your uncle
Tom, Thomas F. Torrance.

RW:
I got to know him much better at the end of his life, having been asked to edit
these lectures of his after his stroke. He was unfortunately in the hospital
and in a nursing home for the last few years of his life, and I visited him
once or twice a week, so I got to know him very well. Things that come across —
he is very, very personable. He took an intense interest in people. When he
died, a number of fellow students wrote or phoned up his brother and said that
when they remembered about Tom was not his academic learning, although the
amount he knew was incredible…what they remembered was his pastoral concern for
them as students.

He
was a minister. On the pastoral side he was always very, very strong, so that
he was a unique combination — a minister, a pastor. He prayed for his students,
he prayed for all the family each day, he read the Bible each day. That’s the
pastoral side, you’ve got the academic side. His knowledge of field after field
of history, of theology, was just amazing.
He knew science. He had incredible energy, he worked at great speed, and
he somehow held all these things together. He was a unique synthesis of
theology and of life. His experiences in the war… that would be an adventure
book in itself, some of the experiences.

I
remember one of the stories. I used to try to get him going on some of his war
memories, because even though I’d heard them, it was good to hear them again. One
time he was out on patrol with the soldiers. He insisted on being with the
soldiers whenever he could, and they gave him skis. This was in Italy, in
winter. And skiing down, one of his skis came off. It was badly fitting, and it
clattered down the hillside. It made a noise and alerted the Germans and they
began firing at him. So he had to ski down on one ski to avoid enemy fire.

There
are numerous occasions when his life appeared to have been saved by a miracle.
They’d be sheltering down in a trench and the person on the left and the right
would be killed. Or he’d sleep in his Land Rover at night and then one night
he, for some reason, didn’t sleep there, and the next day there was a bullet
hole right through where he would have been sleeping.

He
was a man of tremendous energy. He came back from the war and he said, “Mother,
I’m not cut out to be an academic. I’m a man of action.” He had this tremendous
energy.

JMF:
Tell us about your mother. She’s his sister, and I’m curious about how it was
to live with someone who came from such a family.

RW:
It was an immense privilege. There were six children — three sons and three
daughters. They were all given to the Lord before they were born, or dedicated,
and the way that worked out was that the three sons all became ministers and
the three daughters all married ministers. It was a tremendous privilege to have
that theological understanding in the family.

My
father was a medic. Going out as a missionary to Africa, he trained as a
minister. He was a great sportsman. He played hockey for Scotland and he was
very good with his hands…and I combine both. I love sport. I like doing do-it-yourself.
But in many ways the heart of me is theology — it’s knowing God, understanding
the Christian faith, helping to communicate it to others.

We
were made to use our minds and know God with the whole of ourselves, and most
Christians, we tend not to use our minds about God, so we miss out on a lot.
But life, human life is, in all its richness, it’s about being part of the
world, about doing things, so sport for me happens to be my work, but I think
it’s important for people to be active in some way, to use their bodies,
whether it’s in sport or painting or woodwork, because we’re made to be
physical beings, and so to me, it’s good to combine the two.

JMF:
There’s no such thing as a separation then, is there, in between secular… if we
know who we are in Christ, there’s no separation between secular and spiritual,
as it were …

RW:
No, there shouldn’t be. That’s part of the meaning of the incarnation — that
God has become man. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, the human being is body
and soul as a unity. The Old Testament has no concept of a soul apart from the
body so that when the body dies, that’s it, we’re dead. In the Old Testament
the soul is thought of as a living body, a body with breath in it. That’s why
the resurrection in the New Testament is so fundamental, because if we’re not
raised, then that’s it.

God
loves this physical world, he made it as physical, and he’s come to save it as
physical, so he became a physical being, he became man, and he rose in the
body. Jesus is forever bodily. We will forever be human. In some religions, we
stop being human, we actually become God, we lose our individuality. But part
of the glory of the Christian Hebrew tradition is that God loves us as we are,
men and women, children of flesh and blood, and we will forever be human.

JMF:
Did Tom Torrance ever talk about pets? I receive questions frequently, and I
know C.S. Lewis had made some statements about it. Did he ever comment on…?

RW:
He was a keen horse rider when he grew up in China. He taught the mule to jump.
The mule had never done that before. And he skied. He and his family always had
several dogs, so they loved their pets and used to take their dogs for a daily
walk. When you’d go to the house there’s this furious barking, you know? All
the dogs barking and waiting to welcome you.

JMF:
Did he have any feeling on whether there is a reunion with pets in the
resurrection?

RW:
I never heard him on that, but to me everything that we enjoy in this creation
will be somehow renewed over there for us, perhaps in a different form, but
there’s a lot in the Bible about the renewal of the earth and the meek will
inherit the earth, the new city comes down from above. To me it’s wrong to
think of heaven as a separate place “up there.” To me, heaven is the future
state of the earth, which will be so much more wonderful than it is now,
because it will be freed from all sin and crying and tears and just wasting
away or death.

JMF:
Final question… it always arises, if God has redeemed or is reconciling
everything through himself, “whether things in heaven or things on earth” as
Colossians says, through Christ, or in Christ. I don’t know why people are
concerned about the devil and demons, but did Tom Torrance discuss the
resolution of the devil and demons in terms of the new creation?

RW:
He had a very strong and vivid sense, as the New Testament did, of the reality
of evil powers, and Christ’s whole life was a battle with evil. He used to say
that evil is essentially parasitic. It cannot exist in its own right. It can
only exist as an attack on what is good, so that God has made this creation to
be wonderful and good. Somehow the mystery of evil is that there’s this force
which attacks and tries to destroy it. But Christ has overcome this force.

Torrance
used to use the analogy of two grindstones rubbing against each other. One is
going one way and the other is going the other, and they’re rubbing sparks off
each other. One is saying, “I love you” and the other is saying, “No, you
don’t,” and that for him was his picture of hell — that God remains love, God
has redeemed the whole of creation, and the whole of creation is being renewed.
The mystery is that some people, as far as we can, according to the Bible (and
the Bible is our only authority and guide), have the freedom to say no, and
they will say no. They refuse to enter this reality, and so they’re on the
outside, the fringe. He has a very good understanding of the nature of evil and
the powers of evil.

JMF:
The wheels give a great analogy because that’s exactly what happens, is sparks,
and it erodes you as you continue to say no, really, to who you are, to your
actual identity of who God has made you to be in Christ. Yet it is kind of
scary to receive something that you’re unfamiliar with.

RW:
That’s right, because it means we’re no longer self-centered, we’re no longer
in control, we’re no longer turned in on ourselves. We need to learn to look
out, to live for others and with others, and that’s a life, the new life that
God holds up for us in Christ. Some people just, I don’t know why, it’s
illogical, it’s daft. Why would we want to persist in death when we can have
life?

JMF:
Thanks for taking the time to be with us today. We appreciate it.

RW:
Thank you.

JMF:
It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

RW:
Thank you.

Conclusion:
Our thanks to Robert T. Walker, editor of Incarnation:
The Person and Life of Christ and Atonement:
The Person and Work of Christ, by Thomas F. Torrance. Our host was Dr. J.
Michael Feazell.

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